So I thought it could be a good idea to share what I have been up to - and most importantly record some of my genealogy research, because sometimes my brain is so full it is nearly bursting and I just cant remember where I wrote that very important new fact or discovery down. Hopefully, now I will know.

Friday, 30 December 2016

This is a genealogy post - instead of a commentary on where I have been or what I have been eating. When I started blogging family history was going to be the focus of all my posts ! Best laid plans, hey ?Anyway, this year I have been studying our cousin matches at Ancestry, from our DNA tests taken in 2015 and have attended a few workshops and seminars to try to get my head around the science of it. Some of it is sinking in - a lot of it is still mumbo-jumbo. At the end of last year I had uploaded two kits to GEDMatch but still haven't really got the hang of that either. On there, as on Ancestry my closest matches (aside from Mum, Dad and Lauren) are 3rd-4th cousins - most are more distant. It all makes the searching to find the common link a little more time consuming. 3rd cousins share great-great grandparents. But if those great great grandparents (and we all have 8 sets of them) had even just two children, and those two children had two children each, and those four children had two children each, of their own - do we KNOW all of these people ? Remember then, that most of our great great grandparents had at least six children (not two) - and some just kept on going and had like FOURTEEN !This year I uploaded two kits to FamilyTreeDNA - which has different tools to Ancestry, and a smaller database of testers. But again, I've not really got my head around all that it offers. I have actually met two 3rd cousins this year, while on holiday in the States, and spoken to another on the phone. Two of these were new discoveries thanks to the DNA test and the other confirmed our paper trail (YAY). But I have also corresponded - a little sporadically - with several others. For the majority who have responded to messages, we have, between us been able to determine our common ancestors. All that paper research starting way back before the internet has been right - so far. Thanks Dad, Chris, Bessie Peggy and Grev for all that painstaking research.I've also been trying to fill out our tree - the more we know about siblings in each generation the more likely we are to be able to identify a common ancestor (eventually). So I have been searching people's trees on Ancestry for common families and contacting them to offer to collaborate - or to elicit assistance. I've been making fairly good progress there too.In November I got caught up in the GRO pdf trial (Births, Deaths and Marriages in the UK) £6 for a certificate to be emailed, rather than wait for the snail mail ! Thanks twitter for alerting me to this ! The GRO had also launched a search facility on their site. Previously this needed to be carried out on a 3rd party site, and then the actual order for a certificate was made on the GRO site. The new search function had a bonus not found on other sites, in that the mother's maiden name was included in the results - even as far back as the beginning of registration in 1837. Yuss !! This meant that even if you didn't order a certificate to be doubly sure you had the right person, in a lot of cases you could confirm the children you had included with your family did all have a mother with the maiden name you suspected they should have. You could also discover children previously unknown. Those who may have been born, and died between census'. In England the only helpful census in this regard is the 1911, where wives were asked to note how long they had been married and how many children they had had - and how many were still living. Thanks to that helpfulness many families in my tree have"Child Xxxx b. ? d. before 1911". But that only works if the parent was still alive in 1911. This new search enabled many people participating in the trial to find children between all of the census'.I ordered copious numbers of certificates. I now know the birth dates of all of my grandmothers paternal aunts and uncles - and where the family was living at the time of each birth and what job their father had at the time. For most of these I already had their baptism dates from previous research. I also attempted to find the birth certificates for as many of her mother's paternal aunts and uncles (we already have the maternal ones). But I am still missing two. One was born just prior to registration beginning - I do have his baptism date though, sadly with our the birth date noted in the church register. The other is a complete mystery - she seems to have not been registered at all. I thought at first she might have been registered under a slightly different name or spelling. Her sister Emily as registered as Emma, but no. I have just in the last couple of days found her baptism though - with the surname spelt a little weirdly. I have a great great grandmother like this too ! Grrr.Also this year I joined the NZSG and took advantage of that membership to change my subscription at Find My Past from pay-as-you-go to annual. The things I have found !! I've searched on here before looking at shipping and church records some of which are not available at Ancestry, and exploring the 1939 register (taken at the beginning of WW2). But now, since I don't have to be too exacting about what I use my credits for, it is like Pandora's box. I have read the baptism books for each parish I could, to find the baptism dates for most children in one branch of the family. I also read the marriage and burial registers if they were available. What did I find that I wasn't expecting ? That my great grandmothers Uncle Henry had 14 children not 13, that one his children died as a result of an accident when he was a baby. How grief stricken they must have been, but yet they went on to have 9 more babies. Baby George was 13 months old and being carried by his mother when one of her other children called out to her from the top of the stairs and as she turned to reach out to the child she lost her balance, falling to the floor below. Their eldest child at this point was just 7 years old. What a thing for her, and her three younger siblings to witness. How did it affect them ? Their mother was pregnant at the time with her sixth baby, how guilt-ridden and anxious she must have felt. I had known about George though from census records and searching freebmd. I just didn't know the circumstances of his death or the actual date until Find My Past gave me that information in burial records and in a newspaper that reported the inquest in to his death which was held on the day of his burial. What I didn't know until I read the entire baptism register for the parish was that they had had one more child than I had been aware of. She was to be their last child. Her baptism is recorded in the register as "PB"- private, and a note was added in the margin that she had died the next day and been buried 2 days after that. In the burial register her age is given as 1 month. Once her parents and siblings had left this earth did anyone remember wee Lucy Kate ? Possibly only some of her older siblings would have remembered her in any case, perhaps only her parents remembered since these matters were not spoken of in times gone by.I also had a penny dropping moment about one of the same great grandmothers Aunts. Why this thought did not occur to me while the GRO trial was still running I do not know. So I am patiently waiting for their next trial, or the introduction of the pdf service as a normal service. This Aunt had married and had 3 sons. They have been hard to trace into adulthood appearing on some census' and not others. She lived the majority of her life in an Asylum suffering from what I am not sure. Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me that I knew when she was admitted and I knew when her youngest son was born. There was space of a few years there - plenty of time for more children to have been born from her marriage. Being able to search on the GRO and cross reference her maiden name made looking for any so much easier. Bingo ! Two daughters !! I read the baptism register for the parish where they lived, and there were one son and one daughters, baptised on the same day, with another son having been baptised just days before. Sadly the other daughter died aged just 9 months and does not appear to have been baptised. I have been able to follow the surviving daughter who grew up with an aunt and uncle and cousins through to adulthood and possibly her own children. Exciting - there may be more living cousins to connect with yet !So, here are my goals for Genealogy in 2017:

Tuesday, 27 December 2016

In the rush to Christmas I have been a little remiss on this front again.This is my favourite time of year, holidays, traditions, craft, packaging, hunting for the right gift, food. But I wasn't so organised as I would have liked to be, people - if they were lucky - got store bought cards this year. I just couldn't get motivated to get crafty in time this year, My mind has been focused on other matters when I should have been planning. Oh well.There were Christmas lights to hunt out again. We found a few locally, but there was a lot of driving for not too much reward. One little cul-de-sac though had almost every house taking part. Some with just a string or two of lights, others all out - snow foam machines, piped music and all manner of lights. Franklin Rd was a wonder again this year. Residents of some side streets joining in too. I wonder if it is a clause on the house sale/rental agreement that they MUST participate. You couldn't be the Grinch and live there.Typically, as soon as work finished for the year I wanted to do more - bake and ice cakes, make thing. But with just one day (Christmas Eve) between finishing work and the big day, it just couldn't happen.

Food though, had been planned, and we ate well.Beginning on the last day of work when some of us ordered lunches from Eat My Lunch which is a fairly new local business with a heart. A social enterprise giving back to the community. Much like many that we found and embraced while on holiday in the States earlier this year. Delicious too.

Lauren is working through (again) but didn't want to miss out on the cooking so she planned a Christmas Eve feast, as well as Boxing Day dinner and I looked after Christmas Day. Everything turned out well.

...and each night a little bit of that pavlova roulade which seems to have become a traditional part of Christmas now.

We were spoilt with gifts, and enjoyed watching Christmas movies which are also becoming a tradition - can you wear out a DVD with too much playing ?

Today then is the first day to start sorting boxes which have been moved, and moved again and never opened. Maybe I might even find my missing linen ! Time to reorganise the chaos and sell some of the items which can be replaced when need be.

I am going to have to limit my online distractions too - or nothing will get done. But, there have been many family discoveries in the last month and they keep niggling away at me to find more out.

Sunday, 11 December 2016

So, like I said in my last post, we had made a surprise trip to Blenheim for Dad's birthday.Turns out we surprised more than just Mum and Dad - the nephews had been kept out of the loop as well ! We all went out for dinner that evening which was enjoyable. We spent Sunday - birthday proper - catching up, sharing morning tea with other family...and inevitably discussing a bit of family tree. It had been pretty wet on Saturday, but was looking a little brighter on Sunday. Lauren was keen to go see "her" cob cottage. She even mentioned it as we had crossed the Wairau River on our way from Nelson to Blenheim on Saturday. But the river was so high with all the rain I didn't fancy driving along the riverbank. On Sunday, the river levels had begun to drop but the road up to the cottage is unsealed and alongside a small stream (including a ford) which was likely to have been running higher than normal - so again the opportunity was lost.And so to bed - late as usual. Only moments after I had turned off the light, but long enough to have been half asleep, I suddenly became aware that the earth was moving. Initially, I lay in bed listening to the coathangers clinking against each other in the wardrobe, then it became more violent. The house felt like it was twisting and turning and trying to lift itself off its foundations. I remember thinking in blurry half asleep thought "where is this happening if I can feel it this strongly in Auckland ?" and then "Gah !! I'm not in Auckland, I'm in Blenheim". About the same time things began banging, and crashing and falling. I decided then that the door frame might be where I should be, so I shot out of bed and stood there, holding the frame while the house bucked and twisted and things crashed about. I'm usually a freeze on the spot person, wait and see. Earthquakes don't scare or terrify me. They are just one of those things that happen. It's where we live. But I had never felt anything like this one in all my time living in Wellington or Christchurch. And then it stopped.The power was out, so the light on our cellphones came in very handy. We all checked on each other - no injuries - and began checking to see if anything was broken. Miraculously just a few cd cases were casualties having been thrown across the floor when the cd towers had fallen over. An orchid in a pot was strewn across the floor as well, and the vases of flowers on the dining room table had fallen over and emptied water over the table and onto the floor. Ornaments had fallen or been thrown from the large wall unit, but landed without breaking on the carpet. Glasses of water on bedside tables had tipped their contents on the floor or on the beds. All the while we could feel aftershocks. Since there was no power, there was no wifi either. Dad had his little radio on. Radio New Zealand were great - imagine doing that show !! So 7.8 near Culverden. Crikey.Eventually we managed to get some signal outside - yay for mobile data. I text everyone I could think of in Wellington, Marlborough and in Christchurch, checking they were all okay and reassuring them that we were. Neighbours checked on each other and nephew #1 called by to check that we were all okay on his way home to be with his Mum and brother. An hour or so later, with things tidied up and other things moved to the floor - just in case we headed back to bed to try and get some sleep. There was some sleep, but it was interrupted with the earth wobbling constantly. In the morning on the tv we began to see the effects and damage. Kaikoura, Waiau, Mt Lyford, Ward, Oaro. Small rural and coastal communities, completely cut off from the rest of the country. Just crazy. I had a few messages from rellies overseas checking in to be sure we were all okay. We didn't have time to look at much as we needed to fly back to Auckland. It felt odd leaving it all behind. If not for work, we'd have preferred to stay and help in some way. It felt even more peculiar to be so far removed from it all that we couldn't even feel the shaking - having been in the thick of it initially.Over the next few days as the media were able to get access to the impact zone our newspapers, online and tv news, social media were flooded with images and stories. The force of Mother Nature is just awe inspiring, yet freaky. Great chasms forming new valleys, monster landslides, uplift of the land and seabed in place up to 2 metres ! giant boulders tossed to the ground, the railway line thrown across the coastal highway and on to the beach, the road subsiding and cracking, the movement north, east and west of parts of the country.Slowly things are returning to whatever normal is, some roads have reopened, the trip from Picton to Christchurch now takes 7 1/2 hours instead of 4, the earth is still moving. Many buildings in Wellington were damaged and some are being demolished - that was a surprise since the quake wasn't felt as strongly there as it was in North Canterbury and Marlborough. Doesn't bode too well for that big quake they are still expecting. My heart is with Kaikoura though, it is where my family settled after first being in Wellington - and leaving after the 1855 quake. Some of them where already there though as they are referenced in diaries and accounts of that quake and its damage to Flaxbourne (Ward) and the Clarence.Check out these sites if you are interested in seeing the destruction that can be wrought in minutes, by natural forceshttp://www.stuff.co.nz/national/86416304/Live-7-8-New-Zealand-earthquakehttps://www.nbr.co.nz/article/75-north-canterbury-quake-shakes-new-zealand-ck-196636http://www.sciencealert.com/new-zealand-s-earthquake-was-so-powerful-it-dragged-the-sea-bed-2-metres-above-groundhttp://info.geonet.org.nz/display/quake/2016/11http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/21/502889609/watch-drone-footage-shows-aftermath-of-new-zealand-quakehttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11757659http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/kaikoura-earthquake/318101/the-earthquake-aftermath-in-pictureshttp://www.stuff.co.nz/national/nz-earthquake/86460020/Earthquake-More-cows-stranded-on-an-outcrop-of-land-after-three-savedand many more - and in case you are wondering, the cob cottage at Bartletts Creek is still standing.